A future, critical mass of self-driving cars, which log their intended
routes with a central service, could be used to deliver packages by
swapping them from car to car until they arrive.

This exchange would be an extra module that fits into your car and
you are paid both monthly and as you
transport something using that
module - therefore paying for the extra weight.

The method of exchange depends on how safe and reliable the self-
driving cars are. Very safe cars would draw up next to each other
and exchange the packages while less finessed cars might fire the
packages into catch nets (possibly with the parcels wrapped into a
suitable ballistic shape).

Getting the parcels to their destination would probably involve a
whole mess of swapping as each parcel is constantly trying to get
closer to it's destination by any vehicle possible.

I travel a lot using Google maps to work out both walking
and bus routes and, as a result, I often wonder how they
could be improved to in incorporate real-time information
from bus transponders. This probably gets a little closer to
the kind of algorithms needed for this.

After all there would be no fixed routes but humans are
predictable enough en mass to match a swarm of parcels
with a network of self-driving cars. If a critical mass of
self-driving cars with these modules can be established.

Not really, theyre not secure. Anyone can help
themselves to whats being carried by a UAV simply
by stopping it from flying, blinding it and therefore
catching it. Piracy will become rife. People will build
UAV pirate craft to disable and board other UAVs. The
skies above us will resemble the Pirates of the
Caribbean, in almost every way. Yes, even that.

Keep in mind that the "destination" might be a car
occupied by someone, instead of a residence presumably
occupied by someone. If a package is delivered to a
specific/occupied car, this solves the problem of
transferring it from the car to a house (or to the 37th floor
of a high-rise apartment)...because the occupant of the
car can do that final transfer.

Which means that in a conflict between two technologically advanced adversaries, a major objective becomes to take out the other side's drones.

Drones are an unrewarding target for small-arms fire, which also gives away the position of ground forces, pretty much fulfilling the drone's mission.

Inevitably, hunter-killer drones - fighter drones - will appear.

These require considerable skill to operate.

In a delicious irony, this means that just back of the contact line there are likely to be vehicles carrying in the dimly-lit loadspace clumps of whey-faced acne-ridden quasi-aspergic teenagers, whose sole marketable skill is the ability to play video games and therefore fly remote-control drones in real time with skill and accuracy ...

and motivated by points badges and leaderboards of
serious wargamification. The abstraction of real war
into representation of war multimedia is interesting.
It might prove too expensive to have the real war
bit, in future, and only represent it to the media as
the abstracted media of the game front-end. Who is
to tell the difference?

Artificially intelligent packages bidding for transport...
artificially intelligent cars selling it... Tim sits in his car
driving to his girlfriend's house. The car gets off at the
wrong off-ramp. Tim: "Hey!" The car replies, "We're getting
30
bucks for this. Don't you want to pick up flowers on the
way?"

minimarts have convenience foods, which are plausibly
linked to nonoptimal longevity What is a way to
outcompete them without regulation?

The thing is that if those travel pods (link) atop vehicles
had lots of nutritious snacks you could just go to any
vehicle outside with a travel pod, be biometrically
identified, then grab some nutritious snacks

This is more convenient than convenience stores giving
the ability to outcompete them. Notably i read that the
nongas revenue of convenience places was near that of
regular groceries(!)

as driverless vehciles move things from place to place
swapping objects (8th of 7 idea), among those things could
be on vehicle snack foods customized to geographic area

this causes economic benefit to the driverless vehicle
companies while improving the nutritional quality of snacks
causing humans to live longer